En Avant with Karen Gibbons Brown can be heard every Saturday night on the Classical Connection Review on 89.1 WBOI.
Hello, and welcome to En Avant, a ballet discussion brought to you by Fort Wayne Ballet and Kinetic Conversations Podcast.I'm Fort Wayne Ballet Artistic Director, Karen Gibbons-Brown.
We're talking about Don Quixote, the traditional story by Cervantes, but it's been made into a ballet.
We've just pulled a few chapters out of the book to create a lively tale of two young lovers, Keetree and Basil, or Basilio, who are determined to get married despite the protests of her father.
Of course, the village is behind them, so getting them together behind the father's back and then with the father's blessing is where the comedy comes in. In Act 1, you meet the characters, and these characters in the ballet are very well defined.
You have Keetree, who is sassy and spunky.You have Basilio, who is a barber.He has no money, but still loves Keetree and wants to be with her. You have Gamache, the town gentleman who has all the wealth in the village, apparently.
You have Khitri's father, who is taking care and protecting his daughter to all ends that are required.And then you have the villagers and the flower girls that sell flowers in the village. that all add to the color and dimension of the ballet.
This first was choreographed in the 1800s and continues to be revisited as we move through our world today.I think the most recent version of Don Quixote was choreographed in 1980 for American Ballet Theater by Mikhail Baryshnikov.
It's been taped, so if you ever want to see it, it's pretty fabulous.In Act II, Keetree and Basil slip away out of the village and run into a gypsy camp.And the gypsies tell fortunes and have a very lively dance of their own.
The fortune says that the two of them will be married. So Keetree and Basilio go into the town tavern to celebrate their upcoming marriage.There's a whole comedy scene about how they end up getting together.
And in typical classical ballet, our last act is a wedding act.So it shares the marriage of Keetree and Basilio with you, our audience, and with the entire village. Throughout time, the choreography has changed a bit.
Naturally, costumes for ladies have gotten shorter.They began not showing ankles and went shorter and shorter.Gentlemen, their tunilés became tunics, where they could move more freely.
And because the technical demands of our world of dance today are different, Extensions are higher.The range of motion is better.The tricks and the feats that the dancers can do have expounded tremendously.
You'll see more and more of that with the newer versions that are choreographed.But again, the grand pas de deux, the wedding pas de deux, maintains. And again, it's a showpiece.It's at the end of the ballet, by the time they're very tired.
However, it has great amounts of tour de force, or feats for the dancers.The Grand Pas de Deux follows the formula of an entrada, an adagio, a male variation, a female variation, and a coda.
And then, of course, the finale at the end of the ballet, where there is a tremendous celebration of the marriage of Ketri and Basilio.And in the ballet, Don Quixote wanders off into the next village, again in search of his ideal.
You may wonder where the character Dulcinea fits in the story.Not so much in the ballet, actually.She does appear, but she's a small part of the story of the ballet.
There is a point in the ballet where Don Quixote believes that Keetree is his Dulcinea, is his ideal woman, which only adds to the mishap, mayhem, and comedy of the production. All in all, Don Quixote is a ballet for children of all ages.
It is absolutely G-rated, it's one that is family-friendly, and if you have the opportunity to see the production, it will be a lovely evening of fun and enjoyment.
Thank you so much for joining us and listening today, and we look forward to seeing you at the ballet.
Ed Nivant is brought to you by Kinetic Conversations, the official podcast of Fort Wayne Ballet.Fort Wayne Ballet is performing Don Quixote October 18th and 19th at the Pearl Street Arts Center.
Tickets are available at fortwayneballet.org and the ArtsTix Community Box Office.Kinetic Conversations podcast is available on most audio streaming platforms.
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